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THE HATTHEWS-NORTHflUP CO., 
COMPLETE ART-PRINTINS WORKS, BUFFALO, N. Y. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



T3USKIN has remarked in his '* Modern Paint- 
"*- ^ ers " that the scenery most fruitful of literary 
intellect is not the most mountainous, nor the per- 
fectly flat. Neither Switzerland nor Holland has been 
prolific in poetry or in high literature. In ancient 
and classic times the human intellect attained its 
greatest fullness and highest finish amid the hills and 
valleys and streams of Attica, a varied land of moun- 
tain and glen. Professor Veitch of Glasgow in his 
'^ Border History and Poetry" remarks on this fact 
also. He says, " With the mountain there is constant 
struggle, with the pastoral plain there is easy re- 
pose ; the mountain and the plain together call 
forth human energy and give human contentment, 
and on the life of energy and repose bloom the sweet 
flowers of song, and rise to maturity the growths of 
intellect." 

Such a country is the Borderland of Scotland, 
that district of hill and valley through which 
flow the rivers Tweed and Nith and Annan, with 
the smaller streams, the Liddle, the Teviot, the 
Ettrick and the Yarrow. This Borderland has been 
long one of the great founts of Scottish poetry and 
has produced a rich crop of bards and poets. I 
. shall try to show whence these poets got their in- 



4 SIR WALTER 8G0TT. 

spiration, and what was the material from which 
they wove their webs. 

As far back as history or tradition goes, these 
southern counties were the battlefields of contend- 
ing nations and clans. But not to go further back 
than the days of the British King Arthur, Professor 
Veitch proves by etymology and the names of places 
that no fewer than twelve of Arthur^s great battles 
were fought in the lowlands of Scotland, and by 
these he wrested this country from the Saxons, and 
for a time preserved it to the Cymri. The ancient 
Welsh books speak of him as the Guledig or com- 
mon leader of the Oymri and savior of the north- 
ern portion of the Cymric kingdom, which was the 
south of Scotland. Arthur's last battle, in which 
both he and his traitor nephew Modred were slain, 
was the battle of Camelon or Cauilan, and Prof. 
Veitch places that on the Oarron, in Lanarkshire. 
An old bard says **a mystery to the world is the 
grave of Arthur," but tradition points out to this day 
the grave of -Merlin, the seer, the wizard and bard. 
It is at Drumelzier, on the Tweed. The historical 
passing away of Arthur was probably at the battle 
of Camlan, but the historical Arthur was soon 
merged into the mythical. The wild tribes whom 
he led to victory against the Saxons would not be- 
lieve that he was dead, but looked for his return to 
reunite them. In time it became a tradition and 
belief in this district that Arthur and his knights 
lay in repose in the dreamy halls under the Triple 
Eildon Hills, and that they waited there in their 
armor for the bugle call which should restore them 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 5 

to life and quicken the hand to grasp the sword 
anew. 

"Say who is he with summons strong and high, 
Shall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly ; 
Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast 
While each dark warrior kindles at the blast. 
The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand 
And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairyland." 

This district thus connects us with the greatest 
theme of mediaeval imagination and romance. 
These Arthurian legends dwelt in the hearts and 
minds of the people, though we do not find any 
connected embodiment of them in poetry till about 
the middle of the 14th century. 

Coming down to later times, when Scotland was 
consolidated and ruled over by , one king, whose 
government, however, was not strong enough to 
preserve his people from fightings within and foes 
without, these Border counties were long the debat- 
able land between the English and the Scotch, and 
life in them was very insecure. 

The great Border families built themselves castles, 
towers and keeps, in which they fortified themselves 
and their immediate vassals. From these they 
would come forth from time to time in battle array, 
sometimes to meet the English foe who had pene- 
trated into their borders ; again to carry fire and 
sword into the English lands ; but more often to 
make raids and forays amongst their own neighbors. 
"One clan or family was quite ready to burn the 
tower or ' lift' the cattle of its neighbour." But even 
their thieving had the virtue of openness. ''It was 



6 SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

a habit of mutual reprisals or violent exchange." 
They certainly risked their lives in the act and lost 
them often. 

In the families of these freebooters and border 
chiefs were the bards and minstrels who celebrated 
and commemorated their deeds of daring. They 
sang of the quarrels and the feuds — the battles and 
the raids — of the victorious knights and the rejoic- 
ing dames — and of the slain knights and the mourn- 
ing maids, and of their loves and passions. We 
have not the names of many of these ancient bards ; 
they died unknown, but their songs lived after 
them — 

" "Woe that the bard, whose thrilling song 
Has pour'd from age to age along, 
Should perish from the lists of fame 
And lose his only boon — a name ! 
Yet many a song of "wondrous power, 
Well known in cot and greenwood bower, 
Wherever swells the shepherd's reed 
On Yarrow's banks and braes of Tweed, 
Yes, many a song of olden time. 
Of rude array and air sublime, 
Though long on time's dark whirlpool toss'd 
The soDg is saved, the bard is lost." 

Of the different kind of ballads, we have the 
historical ballads, such as The Battle of Otterbourne 
or Chevy Chase, which tells us of the fierce fray 
between the Douglases and the Percys — how 

" It fell about the Lammas tide, 

When the muir-men win their hay, 
The doughty Douglas bound him to ride 
Into England to drive a prey " — 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 

and so on, with the spirited account of the battle 
and how they were nearly all slain. 

" This deed was done at Otterbourne, 

About the breaking of the day ; 
Earl Douglas was buried at the braken bush, 

And The Percy led captive away." 

The song of the Outlaw Murray — Johnnie Arm- 
strong, the Laird of Gilnockie and such like, tell of 
the wild forays. Then there is a class of ballads 
relating to fairies, unseen and supernatural powers. 
Of such is Young Tamlane and Thomas the 
Rhymer's Ride to Fairyland. 

" True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank, 
A ferlie he spied wi' his ee, 
And there he saw a ladye bright 
Come riding down by the Eildon Tree. 
Her skirt was of the grass green silk, 
Her mantle o' the velvet fyne, 
At ilka tett o' her horse's mane 
Hung fifty siller bells and nine." 

Thomas asked if she were the Queen of Heaven. 

" I am but the queen of fair Elfland 
That am hither come to visit thee. 

" Harp and carp, Thomas, she said, 
Harp and carp along wi' me, 
And if ye dare to kiss my lips 
Sure of your bodie I will be 

Which challenge of course was accepted, and 
Thomas was accordingly carried off to Fairyland. 
There is something very weird in these lines — 



8 8IE WALTER SCOTT. 

** Oh they rade on and further on, 
And they waded through rivers abune the knee, 
And they saw neither sun nor moon 
But they heard the roaring of the sea. 

" It was mirk, mirk nicht. 
And there was nae stern* licht, 
And they waded through red bluid to the knee. 
For a' the bluid that's shed on earth 
Runs thro' the springs o' that countrie." 

Michael Scot and Thomas the Rhymer who have 
such a foremost place in the mythical lore of the 
Borders are both real and historical personages. 
Michael Scot lived about the end of the 12th cen- 
tury and beginning of the 13th. He was a very 
learned man for these times. He studied at Oxford, 
Paris and Toledo in Spain. He translated works 
from Arabic into Latin and did much to make 
Aristotle known to Western Europe. His knowl- 
edge of chemistry, astronomy and other sciences gave 
him the reputation of a magician or wizard, and 
Dante speaks of him in the Inferno as a lank thin 
man acquainted with magic fraud. He has passed 
into the realm of weird imagination, and his 
feats of cleaving the Eildon Hills in three, or rather 
of commanding it should be done by a spirit over 
whom he had power, and of putting a dam across 
the Tweed, and weaving ropes . of sand — are what 
he is now remembered for. Thomas the Rhymer, or 
Thomas of Ercildoune, or as it is now Earlston, lived 
in the 14th century. He was one of the count ry^s 
minstrels, and was also accounted a seer or prophet. 
He has left behind a version of the Tale of Tristan 
and Isolde. 

* Star. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 9 

Besides the historical and supernatural ballads, 
there are the romantic and purely love songs and 
the tragic-romantic ballads. In these we find the 
natural scenery has not a little influence in the 
coloring of them. For instance, the songs about 
the Tweed and the Teviot are generally of a sunny, 
cheerful, happy tone, while those of the Yarrow are 
nearly all in a tragic, dark and melancholy strain; 
such as The Dowie Dens o^ Yarrow, The Douglas 
Tragedy and The Lament of the Border Widow. 
The Yarrow is a small stream which flows out of 
St. Mary Loch, joins the Ettrick and flows into the 
Tweed. In this country it would be called a little 
creek, but it seems as if no poetic mind ever 
dwelt in its neighborhood or came within sight of 
its dark waters without feeling impelled to sing of 
it in some way. Besides the old ballads that have 
been preserved to us about the Yarrow, nearer our 
own times, Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, Prof. Wil- 
son and Wordsworth have sung of it. Wordsworth 
gives us his three poems, ''Yarrow Un-visited," 
"Yarrow Visited^' and ''Yarrow Ee-visited.'^ And 
so on down even to our latest writers, Andrew Lang, 
himself a son of the Borderland, has a poem on 
Sunset on Yarrow. 

Very potent, too, in the formative influences of 
the Border people, must have been the different 
religious houses that were established there. Within 
a circle of 20 miles there were four large abbeys 
or monasteries, Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, and Dry- 
burgh. They were all four founded by David I. 
about the beginning of the 11th century. It is 



10 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

a constant marvel to me how in that day when 
the people were undoubtedly barbarous — their man- 
ners and customs and views of life were rude — that 
such grand conceptions as these noble abbeys ever 
had birth or were carried out. For that they were 
grand and noble in conception and beautiful in 
detail, the broken ruins remain to testify. The 
very presence of these edifices must have had a 
refining and educating influence, to say nothing of 
the churchmen and monks who lived in them and 
maintained and propagated the learning of the 
country. 

We have seen, then, how Border life, Border his- 
tory and Border scenery were all factors in the mak- 
ing of the Border poets. In direct succession to 
these lesser poets, inspired by the same scenery, by 
the accumulated song and story, came Walter Scott, 
the greatest of all the Border poets, and who was to 
do so much to make his forerunners known to us. 
He was born, it is true, in Edinburgh — no unworthy 
birthplace for a poet, but he was a true son of the 
Borderland, nursed and reared for the most part 
amongst its hills and dales. From the Scotts he 
inherited his love of free nature and outdoor life — 
not from his father directly, but his grandfather 
was a sheep farmer, holding the farm of Sandyknowe 
as tenant from his relative, Scott of Harden, and 
going farther back there was many a Scot from the 
bold Buccleuch to Wat Scot of Harden, who was 
ranked amongst the wild, adventurous freebooters 
of the Borders. From his mother's side Walter 
inherited his large imagination and brain power. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 11 

She was a Rutherford, daughter of an accomplished 
physician in Edinburgh, who came from a long line 
of Rutherfords, very many of whom for generations 
had been ministers in the south country. Walter 
Scott^s father was a Writer to the Signet in Edin- 
burgh, and he seems to have been a prim, stiff, cut- 
and-dried austere man, honest and just to the last 
degree, but with few of the softer qualities about 
him. Walter was born on the 15th of August, 1771, 
and when he was only eighteen months old (he had 
been a perfectly healthy, well-formed child till then) 
he was seized with a teething fit, which left him 
deprived of power in his right leg. After unsuccess- 
fully trying all sorts of remedies and treatments his 
maternal grandfather, Dr. Rutherford, recom- 
mended that he should be sent out to the country to 
let nature and the sweet, pure air of the hills work 
the cure. He was accordingly sent to his grandfather 
Scott at Sandyknowe. A curious remedy that was 
tried on the delicate child was that as often as a 
sheep was killed they stripped him and rolled him in 
the warm skin as it was taken from the animal. 
He would then be laid out on the hillside, in this 
primitive garb, to drink in the ozone and sunshine. 
His first recollections of conscious existence were at 
Sandyknowe, and he tells us — 

" Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, 

Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. 

It was a barren scene and wild, 

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled ; 

But ever and anon between 

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green, 



12 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

And well the lonely infant knew 

Recesses where the wall-flower grew, 

And honeysuckle loved to crawl 

Up the low crag and ruined wall. 

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade 

The sun in all its round surveyed." 

From this tender age till he was about eight years 
old he was chiefly under the care of his grand- 
parents and his aunt. Miss Janet Scott, and from 
them he first heard the songs and tales of the Border 
heroes — Wat of Harden, Wight Willie of Aik- 
wood, Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead and their 
ilk — '* Merrymen all of the persuasion and calling 
of Robin Hood." He played daily within sight of 
Smailholm Tower, one of the old Border Keeps, and 
we can well imagine how his youthful mind would 
people it with barons bold and ladies gay. It was 
indeed the scene of one of his shorter poems, '^The 
Eve of St. John." 

After he was eight years old, and until he was 
thirteen, he -lived again in his father^s family in 
George Square, Edinburgh, going intermittently to 
the Edinburgh High School, and being tanght by a 
tutor, according to the state of his health. He, 
however, spent most of his holidays in Roxburgh- 
shire ; and when his grandmother and aunt had re- 
moved from Sandyknowe to Rosebank, Kelso, about 
Walter's fourteenth year, he was again placed under 
their care for a lengthened period. That he might 
not be quite idle he went to a school in Kelso, 
where the teacher managed to inspire him with 
some liking for his Latin studies. It was while 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 13 

at this school that he became acquainted with James 
Ballantyne, who was so closely connected with 
Scott's later life. A red-letter day amongst those 
at Kelso, was that in which he fell in with Percy's 
Eeliques — a famous collection of ballads, and he 
fairly revelled in them, reading them under the 
shade of a plantain tree in the garden, and so ab- 
sorbed was he, that even the sharp appetite of a 
boy of thirteen failed to remind him of the dinner 
hour. He says in his fragment of autobiography : 
''To this period, also, I can trace distinctly the 
awaking of that delightful feeling for the beauties 
of natural objects which has never since deserted 
me." From thirteen till he was seventeen or eight- 
een, he continued his studies at the High School, 
Edinburgh, and at the University, interrupted one 
year by a serious illness which left him in delicate 
health for a time. This illness was not lost time to 
him, however. He was not allowed to speak much (it 
had been a hemorrhage), but he was allowed to read 
as much as he chose, and he improved his oppor- 
tunities. His mother and his friends supplied 
him with books of poetry and romance, a kind of 
literature that his father would probably have de- 
nied him, had he been strong and able to study in 
the regular way. At college he made little progress 
with classics, having no taste for these, and soon 
gave up Greek altogether. His memory was good 
in certain directions. He never could remember dry 
facts and figures — statistics or dates, but stories,. 
play-house ditties or Border ballads he could remem- 
ber by the yard. 



14 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Mr. Scott, senior, was anxious that Walter should 
follow his profession, and whether he was to be a 
barrister or only a writer the father thought it best 
to make Walter serve an apprenticeship of five years 
in the office. He was accordingly bound into harness 
in 1786, and went through the drudgery of a law- 
yer's clerk. Walter Scott was always of a frank, 
kindly, genial disposition, and he gathered round 
him a circle of devoted friends amongst his college 
mates and brother clerks in office. It became the 
custom for these chums to take long tramps into the 
country as often as they could get away from their 
law books and desks, and Scott was always the talker 
— the story-teller — in these rambles. There was 
no remarkable event or sudden occurrence in Walter 
Scott's early life to arrest the regular course of things 
or stop the natural growth of his mind. From the 
first his tastes were the same — always reading ro- 
mances and tales, and storing up in his memory old 
ballads and songs. He read mediaeval romances not 
only in English but in French, Spanish and Italian. 
We hear of him saving up the first money he earned 
by copying, to add to his then scanty store of books 
such ones as Percy's Keliques and Evans' Ballads ; 
and his companions, in their walks, were regaled 
with many an extract and quotation. 

About this time, 1787, his father sent him on 
business to a client in Perthshire, and he made his 
first acquaintance with Highland scenery and High- 
land customs, and what delighted him as much — 
Highland legends. His host, Alexander Stewart, 
of Invernahyle, had himself fought under Prince 



SIM WALTER SCOTT. 15 

Charles Edward, and he had fought a duel with 
Bob Roy. It is easy to picture with what delight 
Scott would listen to these recitals of war and 
adventure. For two or three successive years he 
spent some weeks every summer in the Highlands, 
making himself familiar with the scenes of the Lady 
of the Lake, Waverley and Eob Roy; and his letters 
to a friend, descriptive of these scenes, must have 
been graphic indeed; for in one of his friend^s re- 
plies we find him prophesying, in 1789, ^' One day 
your pen will make you famous ^^; and in 1790, the 
same friend urged him to concentrate his ambition 
on a history of the Clans. In order the better to 
equip Walter for his profession, his father made him 
attend lectures on Civil Law in the University, also 
Prof. Dugald Stewart^s class of Moral Philosophy. 
In these classes, especially in the law lectures, he 
met many young men in higher social circles than 
his own, the younger sons of Scottish noblemen and 
landed proprietors, who were being prepared for the 
bar. He found these future barristers cultivating 
general literature without any fear that such pur- 
suits would interfere with the proper studies of their 
professional career, as his father had tried to make 
him think they would. He soon took the resolution 
to qualify himself for the bar, instead of joining 
himself to his father^s business. This must have 
been something of a disappointment to the old gen- 
tleman, who had been looking forward to have his 
son^s presence, help and cooperation in his office; 
but he behaved so handsomely about it that Walter 
ever after remembered his father's conduct at this 



16 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

time with grateful affection. He began to form 
friendships now with young men who introduced 
him, not only to literary and debating societies, but 
to the best and most fashionable society of Edin- 
burgh; and at that day many more of the Scottish 
gentry had their town houses in the Northern capi- 
tal rather than in London, as is the case now. 
Young Scott was taken to the Assemblies and began 
to be particular about his dress. He was handsome 
in spite of his lameness, and many a fair maid was 
content to sit out a dance with him, to listen to the 
magic flow of his talk. Speaking of his lameness, 
we may say here, that unlike Byron, he never 
allowed his infirmity to prey upon his sensibilities. 
In one of his last journals he says, "From child- 
hood's earliest hour I have rebelled against external 
circumstances, '^ and he often referred to a far back 
ancestor, William Scot, called William Boltfoot of 
Harden, *^ who did survive to be a man 'V and Scott, 
who himself was a fearless horseman, used to quote 
with great glee, as he dashed into the Tweed or 
the Ettrick— 

" To tak the foord he aj'^e was first, 
UdIcss the English loons were near ; 
Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man, 
Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear. " 

Lockhart says: '^I cannot avoid regretting that 
Lord Byron had not discovered such another ' De- 
formed transformed ' among his own chivalrous 
progenitors." 

After continuing his legal studies for a year or 
two more he was called to the bar in 1791, when 



SIR WALTER SOOTT. 17 

Scott and his intimate friend William Clerk were 
admitted together. An accurate account of the 
proceedings and ceremonies of the day is to be found 
in Redgauntlet, where Scott figures as Alan Fair- 
ford, and Clerk as his friend Darsie Latimer, and we 
are told that old Saunders Fairford is an excellent 
portrait of Scott's father. It was in the autumn of 
this year that Scott met Mr. Robert Shortreed, assist- 
ant sheriff for Roxburghshire, at the court at Jed- 
burgh, and planned an excursion with him into the 
recesses of Liddesdale ; and for seven successive 
years these companions made a yearly raid into this 
district, so rich in legendary tales and Border 
ballads. It was a wild, inaccessible part of the 
country at the time. There were almost no roads. 
Several years afterwards, when Scott drove his phae- 
ton through this valley, it was said to be the first 
four-wheeled carriage ever seen in these parts. 
There were no inns, and Scott and his friend **put 
up " at a farm house, shepherd's cot or minister's 
manse, whichever came nearest at the close of the 
day's tramp. They were always hospitably received 
and entertained, and Scott gathered in these raids a 
great part of the material for his Border Minstrelsy, 
besides many of the characters for his future novels. 
He had no definite object in his mind at the time. 
*^IIe was makin' himseF," said Mr. Shortreed, 
''though he didna' ken maybe what he was about 
till years had passed, at first he thought o' little, I 
dare say, but the queerness and the fun." We have 
seen that his love of the old romaunts was no mere 
idle play ; that he deemed no labor too great to 



18 8IE WALTER SCOTT. 

make himself master of the mediaeval literature. 
He already read French, Spanish and Italian, and he 
now set about acquiring German, that he might have 
access to the ballads and folk-lore in that rich lan- 
guage. His first attempt at versified translation v^as 
of Biirger's Lenore, and he gained a little celebrity 
by this. Dugald Stewart read it aloud to a company 
in his house and commended it highly. 

In these years, between 1791 and 1796, occurred 
Scott's serious love affair. He met a young lady 
coming out of Grey Friars Church one Sunday, 
when it rained, and he gave her his umbrella and 
his heart at the same time. He soon managed to 
have an introduction, and seemed to have been 
successful in the progress of his suit, for there was 
a correspondence kept up between the young people 
for a time, and Scott made no secret of it in his own 
family. His father, with his stern sense of justice, 
considered it his duty to inform the young lady's 
father. Sir John Belches of Invermay, judging that 
there might be an objection to his son on account of 
inferior social position and uncertain prospects. Sir 
John did not take the affair seriously, for he did not 
at first interfere ; but either he woke up to his pater- 
nal duties, or the young lady changed her mind, or 
perhaps there was a quarrel — history telleth not — 
but in October, 1796, Margaret Belches threw over 
the future '^ Great Wizard of the North,'' and 
married Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, a banker. 
That Scott felt this very keenly there is no doubt, 
but his strength, his pride, of which he had a good 
share, and his healthy mind, enabled him to go 



^IH WALTER SCOTT. 19 

about with a calm exterior, and in time to overcome 
it. Thirty years afterwards, when reviewing that 
part of his life, he wrote in his journal : *' Broken- 
hearted for two years, my heart handsomely pieced 
again, but the crack will remain to my dying day." 
The young lady who was instrumental in hand- 
somely piecing his heart together again was 
Mademoiselle Charpentier, or, as she was usually 
called. Miss Charlotte Carpenter, whom he met on a 
visit to the Cumberland Lakes. She was the daugh- 
ter of a French royalist, of Lyons, who had died in 
the early years of the revolution. Her mother was 
an Englishwoman, and Charlotte was left to the 
guardianship of the Marquis of Downshire, an old 
friend of her mother's family. Scott was not long 
in becoming engaged to Miss Carpenter, and after 
two or three months, merely waiting to arrange mar- 
riage settlements and the young lady's trousseau, 
they were married in December, 1797. Mrs. Scott 
was well bred, had much savoir faire, was lively, 
sparkling and agreeable. She had spirit and self- 
control, too, but she did not enter into Scott's anti- 
quarian or literary pursuits with much sympathy. 
She was a good wife, though, and they were happy. 
Her personal income, which was £500 a year, was a 
very welcome addition to Scott's rather slender and 
not very certain revenue at this time. His first mar- 
ried home was a cottage at Lasswade, a village on the 
Esk, six or seven miles from Edinburgh, where they 
lived from 1798 till 1804, when they removed to 
Ashestiel. In 1799 Scott was appointed sheriff of 
the county of Selkirk, which brought him a steady 



20 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

salary of £300 a year. He discharged liis duties by 
going out to Selkirkshire periodically, keeping 
on his law business in Edinburgh as well. He had 
also joined a cavalry regiment of volunteers and was 
made quartermaster of his company. He much 
enjoyed the drill, the semblance of warlike occupa- 
tion, and took great pride in his own horse and 
accoutrements. Lord Francis Napier, who was 
superior to the sheriff in the jurisdiction of Selkirk- 
shire, considered these other pursuits took too much 
of the sheriff's time, and hinted very strongly that 
a residence in the county was desirable. Indeed, his 
hints became almost commands, so that Scott made 
up his mind to give up his Lasswade cottage and 
remove to Selkirkshire, where he found a house, 
Ashestiel, which belonged to relatives on his moth- 
er's side. Ashestiel is beautifully situated within 
easy distance of the lovely valley of the Yarrow and 
near the town of Selkirk. This was his home till 
1812. But we must now take up his real life-work 
— his literary development and career. 

Scott made a journey to London m 1799, his first 
visit to the metropolis since he was a child. He 
there became acquainted with some of the literary 
men of the day. He had followed his translation of 
Lenore by translating Goethe's Goetz von Berlich- 
ingen and Schiller's Erlkoenig, and other minor 
pieces. The fame of these had preceded him, so 
that he was received as a young aspirant to the world 
of letters. Soon after his return from London he 
met Matthew Gregory Lewis — familiarly known as 
*'Monk" Lewis — who was about to bring out a vol- 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 21 

ume of ballads under the title of Tales of Wonder. 
This project was much talked over with Scott, and 
seems to have put the idea of the Border Minstrelsy 
into his head. In speaking of the Tales of Wonder to 
his old time friend Ballantyne, who was then conduct- 
ing a paper at Kelso, he repeated some ballads of his 
own, and Ballantyne frankly preferred them to 
any of Lewis's. This pleased Scott much, for he 
never rated his own compositions highly. The 
publication of Monk Lewis's book was so long 
delayed that Scott, thinking to bring out a volume 
before the Tales of Wonder, began his collection of 
Border Ballads, and about this time he met with two 
men who entered heartily into his work, and helped 
him materially. The first was John Leyden, an 
eccentric genius, who was an antiquary, a classical 
scholar, an enthusiast, and a strange, unworldly 
being in general. The other friend was William 
Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, 
himself a poet — and one who remained a lifelong 
friend. In 1800, Scott proposed to his friend Bal- 
lantyne to remove from Kelso to Edinburgh, and go 
into the printing business, contracting that he 
should print the Border Ballads when they should 
be ready. Scott worked at the Minstrelsy through 
the years 1801 and 1802, when the first edition was 
published. This contained several of his own com- 
positions — The Eve of St. John, Cadyow Castle, 
Glenfinlas, and others — besides two or three original 
poems by Leyden. The general introduction and 
the notes and comments on the Border Tales show 
much antiquarian research, and reproduce in a vivid 



22 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

manner the feudal times. The Minstrelsy was not 
received with the enthusiasm that met his later 
poems, but it went through several editions, that 
published in 1804 including his Sir Tristrem. Scott 
had now found his element, and was fairly launched 
in literary work, contributing articles to the Edin- 
burgh Review as early as 1803, and he was a recog- 
nized worker in the literary coterie in Edinburgh. 
Sometime in 1802 or 1803 the Countess of Dalkeith 
(afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch), a friend and 
patroness of Walter Scott, on hearing the legend of 
Gilpin Horner, the goblin page, asked him to write a 
ballad on it. Scott had embodied the legend in a 
poem which he thought of including in the Min- 
strelsy, but a fall from his horse while exercising 
with his Military Company confined him to his 
room for a couple of weeks, and gave him leisure to 
enlarge this. The idea then came to him of giving 
a general panorama of old Border life, with its war 
and tumults, and of writing it in the metrical style of 
the old romances, and the beautiful conception of 
putting the whole story into the mouth of the aged 
minstrel — the last of his race — completed the plan 
of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which appeared in 
1805. The first fine quarto edition of 750 copies 
was soon exhausted, and an octavo edition of 1,500 
was sold out within the year. I need not go through 
the various editions, but before Scott revised the last 
one of 1830, 44,000 copies had been sold in Britain 
alone, and his share of the profits amounted to £769. 
In the history of British poetry nothing had hitherto 
equaled the demand for the Lay of the Last Min- 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 23 

strel. Marmion came out in 1808. It is called a 
Tale of Flodden Field, and embodies the spirit of 
patriotism. The Lady of the Lake followed in 1810, 
Rokeby in 1813, and The Bridal of Triermain in the 
same year. These are the poems by which he is 
known, and which gave him his world-wide reputa- 
tion, but they do not by any means represent all the 
literary work of these years. In 1806 he edited a 
volume of Memoirs written during the G-reat Civil 
War, and in the same year he published a volume of 
ballads and lyrical poems. In 1808 he edited the 
Memoirs of Captain George Carleton, the works of 
John Dry den. Memoirs of Robert Carey, and 
Strutt's Queen No Hall — a romance. In 1809 he 
edited the State papers and letters of Sir R. Sadler, 
Lord Somers^ Collection of Scarce and Valuable 
Tracts. In 1810 he wrote the poem The Vision of 
Don Roderick, besides superintending a new edition 
of the Minstrelsy, and so on. But though all these 
things meant work and showed industry, it was by 
his poems that he became known to the world at 
large. They were at once popular. Scott is not 
given a high rank amongst the poets now, and we 
do not claim any such place for him ; nevertheless, 
he swayed the public and carried it with him in his 
own day and generation. Wherein lay his power, 
and what were the elements of his success ? In the 
very simplicity and singleness and clearness of his 
style and treatment. Wordsworth, Southey and 
Coleridge had been preaching a return to Nature 
and natural poetry, and, though they exemplified in 
a measure their teaching in their own writings, yet 



24 tilU WALTER SCOTT. 

the simple language of Wordsworth, for instance, 
often contained thoughts too deep and philosophic 
to be easily understood. The world was not yet 
ready for the introspective philosojohic poetry which 
it has since grown up to. Scott gave them the clear 
diction and easy flowing language, without the 
hidden meanings or deep thoughts. In Scott^s 
poetry he who runs may read, and all read and 
understood — the old and the young — the learned 
and the unlearned — the gentle and the simple. 
His subjects were all romantic, and there was a free, 
rapid movement in the metre. Marmion was com- 
posed in great part in the saddle, and one feels the 
springy, free movement in its measures. Take 
Young Lochinvar, which is introduced in this poem, 
one could repeat it to the time of a gallop. His 
verse is not rich like ByronX it is somewhat bare 
and rugged like his native hills ; but, like the clear 
air of these hills, it is pure, wholesome and bracing. 
Then take his descriptions of scenery, they are veri- 
table pictures, not only in black and white, but in 
rich colors. For instance, his famous description 
of Edinburgh : 

" The wanderiug eye could o'er it go, 
And mark the distant city glow 

With gloomy splendor red. 
For OD the smoke wreaths huge and slow, 
That round her sable turrets flow, 
The morning beams were shed ; 
And tinged them with a lustre proud. 
Like that which streaks a thunder cloud. 
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height 
Where the huge Castle holds its state. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 25 

And all the steep slope down, 
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, 
Piled deep and massy, close and high. 

Mine own romantic town I 
But northward far, with purer blaze, 
On Ochil Mountains fell the rays ; 
And as each heathy top they kissed 
It gleamed a purple amethyst. 
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw, 
Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law, 

And, broad between them, rolled 
The gallant Frith, the eye might note, 
Whose islands on its bosom float, 

Like emeralds chased in gold." 

And this — 

" The summer dawn's reflected hue 
To purple, changed Loch Katrine blue ; 
Mildly and soft the western breeze 
Just kissed the lake, just stirred the trees. 
And the pleased lake, like maiden coy, 
Trembled, but dimpled not for joy." 

Ill the introductory epistles to the different cantos 
in Marmion are some beautiful pictures of autumn 
and winter scenes, and Ruskin considers his sunset 
views Turnerian in coloring. 

" The sultry summer day is done, 
The western hills have hid the sun. 
But mountain peak and village spire 
Retain reflection of his fire. 
Old Barnard's towers are purple still 
To those who gaze from Toller Hill, 
Distant and high the tower of Bowes, 
Like steel upon the anvil glows. 



26 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

And Stanmore's ridge, behind tliat lay, 
Rich witli thie spoils of parting day, 
In crimson and in gold arrayed, 
Streaks yet awhile the closing shade. 
Then slow resigns to darkening heaven 
The tints which brighter hours had given." 

Ruskiii has written a beautiful chapter, in his 
Modern Painters, on Scott's feeling for Nature, and 
how he shows humility and unselfishness in his 
expression of it — never representing Nature through 
his own moods, but always as she really is — inde- 
pendent and outside of himself. I would like to 
make one other quotation before I leave his poetry, 
because it is a fine example of his power to repro- 
duce the feeling that certain scenery engenders — his 
description of St. Mary's Loch in calm. 

" Oft in my mind such thoughts awake. 
By lone St. Mary's silent lake. 
Thou kuows't it well, nor fen nor sedge 
Pollutes the pure lake's crystal edge ; 
Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink 
At once upon the level brink, 
And just a trace of silver sand 
Marks where the water meets the land. 
Far in the mirror, bright and blue, 
Each hill's huge outline you may view. 
Shaggy with heath, but lonely, bare. 
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there. 
Save where of land yon slender line 
Bears thwart the lake the scattered pine ; 
Yet even this nakedness has power. 
And aids the feeling of the hour ; 
Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy, 
Where living thing concealed might lie. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 27 

Nor point retiring hides a dell 

Where swain or woodman lone might dwell. 

There's nothing left to fancy's guess, 

You see that all is loneliness, 

And silence aids — tho' the steep hills 

Send to the lake a thousand rills. 

In summer tide so soft they weep 

The sound but lulls the ear asleep ; 

Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude 

So stilly is the solitude." 

In 1807, Scott was appointed to a clerkship of 
session, that is, he was made assistant clerk — doing 
the real work of the office without drawing the sal- 
ary, which he continued to do for five years. In 
1812 the nominal incumbent died and Scott obtained 
the salary, which was £800 a year — that with the 
sheriffdom gave him an income of £1,100, apart from 
what his literary work brought in. A year or two 
before, his uncle, Captain Robert Scott, died, and 
left the villa Rosebank, at Kelso, to Walter, which 
he sold for £5,000. So that when he received the 
clerkship in full he felt himself justified in doing 
what he had long contemplated and desired — 
namely, purchasing a small estate of his own. As 
the owners of Ashestiel wished to take that house 
into their own hands again, Scott was obliged to find 
some other residence, so he bought a little property 
five miles lower down the Tweed than Ashestiel. It 
consisted of a hundred acres, with very few trees on 
it, and an old farm house, and it went under the 
very uneuphonious name of Clarty Hole, Anglic^ 
(Mud Hole), but Scott immediately rechristened it 
Abbotsford. The land all around there had once 



28 SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

belonged to the Abbey of Melrose, and just above 
the house, where the G-ala Water runs into the 
Tweed was the Abbot's Ford. Scott kept a few 
fields of his farm for pasture and tillage, and soon 
set about planting from fifty to sixty acres of it with 
trees, and he built a modest house which was the be- 
ginning of the future baronial pile. In May, 1812, 
then, they moved to their new home. Soon after 
Scott's marriage he had bought a house in Edin- 
burgh, No. 39 North Castle Street, which continued 
to be their town house till 1826, but the real home, 
the one he so fondly hoped to make the Family Seat, 
was Abbotsford. 

Later on I shall speak of Scott's connection with 
the brothers Ballantyne and the printing business, 
but just here I shall only say that as early as 1813-14 
he already felt pecuniary straits and the necessity for 
making more money. He had an inward feeling 
that his vein of poetry was pretty well worked out. 
He knew also that Byron's star was in the ascendancy, 
and he himself knew and acknowledged Byron's 
superiority, therefore, on coming across some sheets 
of a Jacobite romance which he had written in 1805, 
he at once made up his mind to finish that and pub- 
lish it. Waverley was sent out into the world in 1814, 
and went forth on its own merits without any name. 
Scott was not sure that this new venture would 
please. He was not willing to risk failure and the 
depreciation that would thence come to the name 
and fame he had gained through his poems. And 
having once assumed the mask of the Unknown, it 
tickled his humor and pleased him to keep it up. 



SIM WALTER SCOTT. 29 

He was more free and indepeadent of the critics, and 
it screened him from many visits of the curious and 
from fulsome compliments which he never relished. 
Waverley came like a new star in the firmament ; 
it was read and talked of by everybody everywhere. 
It was the sensation of the day. In less than three 
months it had run through three editions. Jeffrey 
reviewed it, of course, in the Edinburgh. He quar- 
reled with the carelessness of the style, but was, on 
the whole, just to its proper merits. Jeffrey had 
known Scott all his life, and he must have known he 
was the author ; indeed, he hinted it very broadly, 
while at the same time making a semblance of 
ignorance, when he wrote in his review : 

"There has beea much speculatioa about the authorship 
(i. e., of Waverley) etc. Judging from internal evidence, to 
which alone we pretend to have access, we should not scruple 
to ascribe it to the higiiest of those authors to whom it has 
been assigned by the sagacious conjectures of the public — and 
this at least we will venture to say, that if it be indeed the 
work of an author hitherto unknown, Mr. Scott would do well 
to look to his laurels and to rouse himself for sturdier compe- 
tition than any he has yet had to encounter." 

Scott found then that he had discovered a new 
vein, richer and more easily worked than the poet- 
ical one, and as he went on digging it gave up count- 
less and seemingly inexhaustible treasures. Waverley 
was published in 1814. The Lord of the Isles, 
another poem, appeared in the following year, and 
Guy Mannering as well. The Antiquary and Tales 
of My Landlord came in 1816. Rob Roy in 1818. 
The second series of Tales of My Landlord and The 



30 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Heart of Midlothian in the same year. The year 
1819 must have been a busy one, for there appeared 
Tales of My Landlord, 3d series, The Bride of 
Lammermoor and The Legend of Montrose, also The 
Visionary and a Description of the Eegalia of Scot- 
land. In 1820 came Ivanhoe, The Monastery and 
The Abbot. Kenilworth in 1821. The Pirate, For- 
tunes of Nigel, and Peveril of the Peak followed in 
1822. Then Quentin Durward the next year. St. 
Ronan^s Well and Redgauntlet both appeared in 
1824, and The Betrothed and The Talisman in 1825. 
I make a pause here, for in 1826 came the blow that 
well-nigh took everything from the author. After 
this his work was more a grinding of grist for the 
mill than the free creation of his fancies. With in- 
domitable pluck and determination he wrote Wood- 
stock, when his troubles were the thickest in 1826, 
and the following year he published his Life of 
Napoleon Buonaparte, the first series of Chronicles of 
the Canongate, The Highland Widow, The Two 
Drovers, and The Surgeon's Daughter. Tales of a 
Grandfather, and second series of The Chronicles, 
with The Fair Maid of Perth, came in 1828. In 1829 
more of The Grandfather's Tales, and Anne of 
Geierstein. The Grandfather's Tales continued ap- 
pearing through 1830 and 1831, with a History of 
Scotland, and in 1832 came the last of the Tales of 
My Landlord, with Count Robert of Paris and Castle 
Dangerous. Then the magic wand was laid aside 
forever. 

The foregoing is the chronological order of the 
Waverley Novels. They all appeared as '^by the 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 31 

Author of Waverley." In our day there are novelists 
who have equaled or gone beyond him in the 
number and rapidity of his productions, but from 
Shakespeare down to this great Magician, no writer 
had approached such fecundity. Instead of analyz- 
ing or criticising the novels separately, I shall try 
to point out shortly some of the author^s character- 
istics, and how they entered into and affected his 
works. First and foremost then, he was Scottish ; 
his Scotticism ran through everything and over all. 
He was fond of antiquarian research, but his re- 
searches scarcely ever went beyond his own country. 
He had always a fondness for history, but it was 
nearly all centered on the history of Scotland. His 
love of scenery was genuine, but none gave him 
such keen pleasure as his own bare hills. When he 
took Washington Irving up the Eildon Hills to 
admire the view from thence, he was disappointed 
at Irving^s silence and want of enthusiasm, and 
said, " It may be partiality, but to my eye these gray 
hills and all this wild border country have beauties 
peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness 
of the land, it has something bold and stern and 
solitary about it. When I have been for some time 
in the richer scenery about Edinburgh, which is 
like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself 
back again among my honest gray hills, and if I did 
not see the heather at least once a year, / think I 
should die.'' His love of the past did not cover all 
the past, it dwelt mainly on the Middle Ages and 
feudal times — on the Gothic period of history and 
literature, and when he is not Scottish he is Gothic 



32 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

— but most often these two qualities are mingled 
and combined. His delight in the past disposed 
him to be a historian, his fine memory from early 
youth had laid up inexhaustible stores from all 
sources, and his great and active imagination 
gave him the creative faculty, and enabled him to 
live himself in this past and to reproduce living 
realities from it. His love of nature, of outdoor 
life, is very perceptible in his books ; there is an 
out-of-doors sort of atmosphere about them. There 
is much more of action than repose or representa- 
tion of the inner life. Indeed, he touches very 
little on the inner life of mankind — that has been 
left for the latter-day novels. Of the twenty-nine 
novels, nineteen have the scenes laid in Scotland, 
and treat of Scotch subjects and circumstances, and 
these are in general his best, though Quentin Dur- 
ward, where the scene is laid in France, and in the 
time of Louis XI., is by many ranked very high. 
But his strongest, his best characters, those that are 
most real to us, are such as he was daily familiar 
with — the South country farmer, Dandie Dinmont, 
the Presbyterian gardener, Andrew Fairservice, the 
Glasgow Baillie, ISTicol Jarvie, the wandering beggar, 
Edie Ochiltree, ''the stickit minister,^' Dominie 
Sampson, and so on. His gypsies and outlaws, such 
as Dirk Hatterick, Meg Merillees, Madge Wildfire 
and Rob Roy, are strong creations, and his witches 
and hags are as weird and uncanny as Shakespeare's. 
In simple and homely characters his delineation is 
almost perfect, but when he attempts beings of a 
higher order, he falls far short. Professor Masson 



STR WALTER SCOTT. 33 

says the only Scotch thing that Scott had not in 
him was Scotch metaphysics. He lacked in a 
marked degree the speculative, philosophic, intro- 
spective qualities of mind ; for that reason he could 
not show the mode of thinking of such characters 
as one would expect to exhibit powers of thought. 
His women in the higher walks of life are mere 
dolls. He had a chivalrous tenderness for women 
of his own or higher rank, which kept him from 
looking deeply into their weaknesses, or handling 
them familiarly enough to portray them well ; and 
yet, some of his scenes in which Queen Mary (and 
Queen Elizabeth, too) figure, are masterly. But of 
all his women that T know, I infinitely prefer Jeannie 
Deans, in The Heart of Midlothian. Here is a true 
heroine. She is not the ostensible heroine of the 
plot — her sister Effie has that place. Effie has also 
all the beauty and the tragic history, and yet oner's 
interest in plain, simple Jeannie never flags. She 
is so true, so heroic without knowing it, so dignified 
and so steadfast. Though she is a humble dairy 
woman, milking cows and making cheese with her 
own hands, there is a native refinement about her 
that makes her a lady and a fitting mistress of the 
manse when her lover afterwards gets a church and 
takes her to his home. And in this character comes 
in a feature of Scott^s Scotticism — namely, a stern 
adherence to truth. You remember the story — Effie 
Deans is accused and to be tried for child murder; 
the murder itself cannot be proven, but the conceal- 
ment of pregnancy was by Scotch law a capital crime, 
^ and it rested with Jfannie to prove whether or not 



34 SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

her sister Effie had ever spoken to her of her con- 
dition. Jeannie's heart was yearning over and 
breaking for her sister as well as her old father, but 
no temptation could make her speak an untruth ; 
and, when at the trial, the lawyer for the defense 
adroitly insinuated that Effie must have told her 
sister, Jeannie could only answer, "Alack, alack, 
she said never a word to me about it." Victor Hugo 
would not have done this. He would have made 
Jeannie tell a falsehood to save her sister^s life (and, 
indeed, that may involve a grave question in ethics). 
One great charm of the Waverley Novels is the 
sound, healthy tone in them all. Scott regards 
mankind through his kindly, genial disposition. 
He never sneers, and there is neither mawkishness 
nor morbidness to be found in them. If they were 
not written with any exalted motive to reform 
society or make the world better, they have 
certainly given a world of pleasure to thousands of 
his fellowmen, and that is no small thing. Carlyle 
says the historical novels have this merit that they 
taught "all men this truth which looks like a 
truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers 
of history and others till so taught — that the 
bygone ages of the world were actually filled by 
living men, not by protocols, state-papers and ab- 
stractions of men. Not abstractions were they, not 
diagrams nor theorems, but men with buff or other 
coats and breeches, with color in their cheeks and 
passions in their stomach, and the idioms, features 
and vitalities of very men." It is true we do not 
go to the historical novels for real history, but they 



SLR WALTER 8G0TT. 35 

make a charming introduction to real history, and 
what does Scotland not owe to the Waverley Novels 
and Scott^'s poems ? Are they not the real guide 
books that have served to show the universal tourist 
the mountains and lakes, the rivers and valleys, the 
old castles and ruined abbeys ? Indeed, it is no 
meaningless word-play to say this is Scott — land. 

But we must hasten over the remaining incidents 
of Scott^s life. We have seen that he took possession 
of Abbotsford in 1812, and from this time he began 
to buy land, to plant and to build — all with the 
view of making an estate, and of endowing a new 
branch of the Clan Scott. While his duties in the 
Court of Sessions kept him in Edinburgh during 
termtime, and he was always a prominent and 
honored member of Edinburgh Society, he spent his 
happiest days at Abbotsford, with his family and 
his dogs and his trees. 

In younger life he was a pretty keen sportsman, 
hunting and coursing, but in later years he was con- 
tent to ride out on his pony, surrounded with his 
dogs, to look after his plantations or act as guide 
through the surrounding country to his many visit- 
ors. Immediately after the publication of "Waverley, 
Scott made a tour round the north of Scotland 
amongst the Orkney and Shetland Islands and the 
Hebrides, of which he has left a full and detailed 
journal. Shortly after the Battle of Waterloo he 
and two or three friends from his neighborhood vis- 
ited Brussels and the battlefield and went' from 
thence to Paris, when the allies were in possession of 
that city. Scott there met the great Duke of Wei- 



36 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

lington and Lord Castlereagh, Bliicher and Platoff, 
the Prince of Orange and the Czar. He sent home 
a series of letters called '' PauFs Letters to his Kins- 
folk/' which, after being read by his famil}^ circle 
and intimate friends, were passed over to Ballantyne, 
who published them. Scott visited London once or 
twice in these years and received marked attention 
from the Prince Eegent. In 1818 the Prince pro- 
posed to Lord Liverpool to confer a baronetcy on 
Walter Scott, and the offer was made to him. He 
accepted it and was invested with the title in 1820 
on the accession of the prince as George IV. Scott 
after this seems to have thought it necessary to live 
in a more lordly manner, and to have an establish- 
ment befitting a nobleman, and he therefore set 
about adding to his mansion and otherwise branch- 
ing out into great expenditure. From 18 \ 5 till 1825 
was the time of his greatest prosperity and popular- 
ity. His house became the Mecca of pilgrims from 
all parts of the world. He was never sure of a day 
or an hour free from visitors. Very many he invited, 
but many more came uninvited. He was always the 
courteous, genial host, and for those whom he wished 
to honor he spared no pains in entertaining them. 
He himself generally acted as cicerone to the lions 
of the district, Melrose, Jedburgh and Dry burgh 
abbeys, and he seldom failed to take those whom he 
knew would appreciate it, up the beautiful Vale of 
Yarrow. We have a delightful account of Washing- 
ton Irving's visit to Sir Walter in 1819, and he, with 
others, wondered how this prolific writer could do so 
much work and yet apparently give all his time to 



8IR WALTER SCOTT. 37 

his visitors. Sir Walter had taken up the habit 
when he went to Ashestiel of rising very early in the 
morning, generally at 5 o'clock or soon after, and 
doing an hour or two's work before the rest of the 
household were about. He said himself he generally 
managed '' to break the neck of a good day's work 
before breakfast." Though he was in reality always 
a hard worker, he appeared to most people who saw 
him to be the country gentleman with nothing else 
to do than look after his house and lands and enter- 
tain his friends. As his house grew in size, so did 
his collection of curios and antiquities. Many 
friends, knowing his liking for such things, sent him 
handsome presents and contributions. George IV. 
gave him some very beautiful old carvings, besides a 
valuable collection of old Italian books. Byron and 
Scott exchanged presents when they met in London. 
Byron's gift to him was an antique silver vase filled 
with bones which had been dug up in G-reece. All 
who have visited Abbotsford know what a museum 
of such objects of interest it is. 

Sir Walter was an affectionate, kind husband 
and father. His children were Sophia, Walter, 
Anne and Charles. Sophia married John Gibson 
Lockhart, the devoted admirer and faithful biogra- 
pher of Scott. She died in 1837, leaving four 
children. Her granddaughter, Mrs. Maxwell Scott, 
is the present owner of Abbotsford. Walter entered 
the army. At his marriage his father purchased a 
captaincy in a regiment of hussars for him. He 
was Sir Walter Scott the second, but died childless 
on his way home from India in 1847. Anne never 



38 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

had robust health. She never married, and sur- 
vived her father only one year. Charles, the youngest, 
entered the diplomatic service, but also died young 
at Teheran, in Persia. The Lockharts had a house 
called Chiefswood, near Abbotsford, where they 
spent their summers, and there were many happy 
goings back and forth between the two houses. 
When Abbotsford was overrun with visitors. Sir 
Walter would sometimes escape and ride over to 
Chiefswood early in the morning, and greet his 
daughter's family as they came down to breakfast. 
He would have an hour of quiet enjoyment with his 
grandchildren, and go back to meet his guests. The 
winter months, as we have seen, were spent in Edin- 
burgh. His intimate and life-long friends were 
William Clerk, an advocate, William Erskine, after- 
wards Lord Kinedder, and Sir Adam Fergusson. 
Erskine was the literary friend to whom he sub- 
mitted nearly all his writings, for criticism. Outside 
of these, of course, he had a large circle of friends, 
indeed ; we see that from his correspondence which 
is voluminous. That is a charming picture of Sir 
Walter as he appeared daily in the Edinburgh streets, 
which Dr. John Brown (Eab) gives us in introducing 
his sketch of Marjorie Fleming. ^^ Three men, 
evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping, 
like schoolboys, from the Parliament House, and 
speeding arm in arm down Bank Street and the 
Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet. The 
three friends were curiously unlike each other . . 
the third was the biggest of the three, and, though 
lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power ; 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 39 

had you met him anywhere else, you would say he 
was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle 
blood ; ' Si stout, blunt carle,' as he says of himself, 
with the swing and stride, and the eye of a man of 
the hills — a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about 
him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders 
was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and 
Buonaparte's, is the best known in all the world." 
It is an entirely different view of him than anything 
we get through Lockhart, his love for this quaint, 
bright, elfish little maiden. Imagine the great 
stalwart Sir Walter, carrying wee Marjorie in the 
corner of his plaid, through the snow, taking her 
into his own room and setting her down in his big 
chair — and then sitting down before her and gravely 
beginning to repeat his lesson of *' dickory dickory 
dock," or *'Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven, aliby, 
crackaby, ten and eleven," etc. His gravity could 
not hold out, however, and he burst into roars of 
laughter, at which his mite of a teacher would 
reprove him and make him begin over again. And 
then we are told how one Twelfth Night he had all 
his familiar friends to supper, and sent for Pet 
Marjorie to entertain them. She was set in the 
midst, and she and Sir Walter were the stars, and 
some who were present said it was a night never to 
be forgotten. 

We have spoken of Scott's connection with the 
brothers John and James Ballantyne. His friendship 
with them dated from the early school days at Kelso. 
For some years he lost sight of them, but met James 
again when he became editor of the '^ Kelso Mail." 



40 sin WALTER SCOTT. 

James Ballantyne had some literary ability and taste, 
and considerable powers of criticism ; and Scott got 
into the way of showing him his early productions 
and getting his judgment upon them. Sir Walter's 
kindly nature made him want to help his friends, so 
when he was about to publish the Border Minstrelsy, 
he proposed to Ballantyne to remote to Edinburgh 
and set up a printing establishment, knowing that 
Ballantyne had a good taste in typography, and 
promising to use his influence with the publishers to 
get him other work. Scott put some money into the 
printing business at first, but later on he set up the 
brother John B. as publisher and bookseller and 
made himself a special partner in both businesses. 
Sir Walter saw, or thought he saw, other publishers 
making money out of authors, and he thought by 
having a controlling interest in a publishing and 
printing business, he would gain some of the profits 
of publisher as well as author. But it was contrary 
to the established order of things for an advocate to 
have anything to do with trade, and therefore all these 
transactions were secret. Neither of the Ballantynes 
were good business men. James was indolent ; he 
was faithful to Scott as a critic and corrector of his 
MSS., and proof-reader, but there would often be days 
and days when he never went near the press rooms. 
Then, John was careless, was dissipated, irregular 
and extravagant. Scott was strangely and unac- 
countably blind to these faults ; and, though he 
never seemed to get accurate financial accounts of 
the business, and John Ballantyne very soon began 
the unsafe method of giving notes for indebtedness, 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 41 

his eyes were not opened. He advanced and sunk 
into the concern thousands of pounds. Then Scott 
himself got into the way of forestalling his rev- 
enue, and would get a bill from Constable & Co., 
who were the publishers of the novels, for so many 
volumes of fiction before a word of them was writ- 
ten. 

It is a long and sad story of mismanagement and 
carelessness on all sides, till at last in 1826 the 
crash came in the failure of Constable & Co., 
which brought down Ballantyne & Co. as well. 
All their paper was endorsed by Sir Walter and they 
failed for the large sum of £117,000. Then the 
mask was torn off, the world not only knew who 
was the real author of the novels, but had to know, 
too, that he was the moneyed partner of B. & Co., 
and that with them he lost his all. Instead of going 
into bankruptcy and asking the creditors to accept 
a partial payment. Sir Walter chose to put his 
affairs into the hands of trustees, and agreed to pay 
up the whole debt in time. It was a terrible blow 
to fall on a man fifty-five years old, and who must 
have felt that he was past his best, and past the 
height of his popularity ; but his courage and his 
pride, his two strongest traits, came to his help. He 
saw it was hopeless to think of James Ballantyne 
ever being able to pay up this large indebtedness, 
and he heroically made up his mind to write and 
work till it was done. Sir Walter has been much 
blamed for his great expenditures in connection 
with Abbot sford, but he was making immense sums 
by his writings. His income from his books during 



42 SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

some of his best years was £10,000, and he made in 
all by his writings during his lifetime £140,000, or 
$700,000, and on his land and building together he 
did not spend more than half of that. It was not a 
blameworthy thing in itself, the desire to found a 
family and give it a befitting setting. If he had 
been successful, that is, had not lost his money in 
business, I do not think anyone would have blamed 
him for leaving a handsome house and estate to his 
son. But he was to blame in his careless transactions 
with these business concerns — in the rash way in 
which he allowed the Ballantynes to give notes, and 
in the sanguine way in which he frequently fore- 
stalled his own earnings, and spent the money before 
it was actually made. But when the end came, he 
prepared to give up everything. January 17th, B. 
told him the fatal news, and on January 22d he 
wrote in his journal — '* I have walked my last on 
the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the 
halls I have built ; but death would have taken them 
from me if misfortune had spared them. In prospect 
of absolute ruin, I wonder if they would let me 
leave the Court of Session. I would like methinks 
to go abroad ^ And lay my bones far from the 
Tweed,^ but I find my eyes moistening, and that will 
not do. I will not yield without a fight for it."*^ 
And then he sets to work immediately on Woodstock, 
which he had begun shortly before. He sold his 
Castle Street house and went into lodgings in Edin- 
burgh. Abbotsford was made over to his trustees 
for the benefit of his creditors, who, much to their 
credit, gave it back to him, after he had paid them so 



SIM WALTER SCOTT. 43 

much, and they saw his bona fide intention of paying 
them in full. 

Four months after the financial catastrophe came 
another blow — Lady Scott was taken from his side, 
and this was a real bereavement. He almost felt 
thankful for her that she was removed from the 
anxieties and discomforts of their altered circum- 
stances, but he mourns the loss of his life-long 
companion. ''1 wonder what I will do/" he says in 
his journal, *' with the large portion of thoughts 
which were hers for thirty years. I suspect they 
will be hers yet, for a long time at least."" The day 
before her funeral he writes, ''Another day, a bright 
one to the external world, the air soft and the 
flowers smiling, but they cannot refresh her. Cold 
earth must soon have her. But it is not my Char- 
lotte, the bride of my youth, the mother of my 
children, that will be laid among the ruins, of Dry- 
burgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and 
pastime. No, no, she is sentient, conscious of my 
emotions, somewhere — somehow — where, we cannot 
tell — Jiow, we cannot tell ; yet I would not at this 
moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope 
that I shall see her in a better world, for all that 
this world can give me.'" 

We have seen how he went on Avriting, but the 
spring was broken, he was not again the same buoy- 
ant, bright and jovial good fellow that he had been. 
Between Januarv 1826 and 1828 he had earned for 
his creditors £40,000, and before he died he had 
paid off £63,000 of the liabilities. But even his iron 
nerve could not stand such a strain. In 1830 he was 



44: SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

seized with the first paralytic stroke. He recovered 
so quickly from that, that in a few days he was able 
to go about again, but Mr. Lockhart thinks that his 
brain was never quite so clear afterwards. He 
suffered from rheumatism in the hand, so that he 
was obliged to employ Laidlaw to write for him, and 
in dictating he would often look round him as one 
'* mocked with shadows.^' He began, too, to fear the 
loss of his power to create, but he would not rest. 
In the beginning of 1831 he was ill again, but 
nothing would keep him from work. In March of 
that year he went to Jedburgh to speak and vote 
against the Eef orm Bill — that great measure which 
was agitating the length and breadth of Great 
Britain. Sir Walter had always been a strong Tory, 
and, of course, he thought this revolutionary bill of 
the Whigs was going to ruin the country, and he 
must raise his voice. But when he rose up to speak 
he was hissed down, and on a second effort his voice 
was again drowned in hisses — he sat down saying 
indignantly: '*I regard your cackle no more than 
the geese on the green. '* He soon recovered his 
equanimity and when he rose to leave the hall he 
bowed to the assembly (a few renewed the hisses, 
when he bowed again and said in the words of 
the doomed gladiator), " Moriturus vos saluto." 
When he came out to the street he was pelted, and 
there were even cries of ''Burke Sir Walter.^' This 
in his own county was a dreadful shock to him. He 
never got over it. Count Eobert of Paris, on which 
he was engaged, went on haltingly — Ballantyne and 
Caddell (a partner in Constable's) wrote unfavor- 



c c 
c * 
«c r 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 45 

able criticisms of it — but yet he kept on. He began 
Castle Dangerous in July, 1831. 

In September of that year other signs of decay 
were plain. He had illusions, and his memory failed 
him. The physicians and his family urged him to 
try a voyage, and he at last consented. The Liberal 
Government, against which he had so worked and 
voted, generously offered him the use of a ship of 
the navy to take him to the Mediterranean. He 
accepted the offer, and arrangements were made for 
the journey. Wordsworth came in September to 
visit his old friend and bid him good-bye. Together 
they took the beautiful drive up the ever memorable 
Valley of the Yarrow, and saw again the still quiet 
of St. Mary's Loch. They communed together by 
the way, and Wordsworth has left us a precious 
memorial of that day in his poem ^^ Yarrow Ee- 
visited."" The next day Scott left for England. In 
October he sailed for Malta. He visited Eome, 
Naples and Venice, but he was homesick all the 
time. He had counted much on meeting Goethe, 
and had planned to go to Weimar after leaving 
Italy, but, in March (1832), while he was still in the 
south, came the news of Goethe's death. *' Alas for 
Goethe, '' he said, ^^but at least he died at home; 
let us to Abbotsford.'^ He remained on the conti- 
nent till June, when he had a tit of apoplexy, on a 
Rhine steamer, which made it necessary to take him 
home at once. When he reached London he recog- 
nized his children and gave them his solemn blessing, 
but was scarcely able to talk. As soon as possible 
he was taken by steamboat to Edinburgh, and 



46 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

thence by carriage to Abbotsford. He was quite 
unconscious when they left Edinburgh, but . he 
gradually woke up to the sights around him, and 
when they came in sight of the Eildon Hills he 
grew excited, and, on seeing the beloved towers of 
Abbotsford, Mr. Jjockhart and his servant could 
scarce hold him in the carriage. For some days he 
seemed to rally, and was wheeled about in his chair, 
and once he tried to write. The pen was put into his 
hand, but his fingers failed to clasp it, and he sank 
back with tears rolling down his cheeks. ^' Friends,^' 
he said, ^^ don^t let me expose myself . Get me to 
bed — that is the only place/^ He lingered on till 
the 21st of September, when he passed away, and 
*^his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.^^ 

Sir Walter was buried in Dryburgh Abbey beside 
his wife, and at his feet lie the remains of his 
devoted biographer, John Gibson Lockhart. 

I am conscious that very much has been omitted 
that would make this paper more complete. I have 
said little of his intercourse and correspondence with 
other authors and noted men and women of his time. 

— I should have spoken of his political opinions and 
acts — and of his religious views (these he always 
kept in the background). I would like to have given 
more of the criticisms of his contemporaries, and I 
would fain have read some extracts from his novels 

— but — what can we do with all that in an hour? 
We take for ours Carlyle^s closing paragraph of his 
essay on Sir Walter : 

" And so the curtain falls ; and the strong Walter Scott is 
with us no more ; a possession from him does remain, widely 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 47 

scattered, yet attainable, not inconsiderable. It can be said of 
him, when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No 
sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that 
eighteenth century of time. Alas, his fine Scotch face, with 
its shaggy honesty, sagacity and goodness, when we saw it 
latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn with care : the 
joy all fled from it — ploughed deep with labor and sorrow. 
We shall never forget it, we shall never see it again. Adieu, 
Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen, take our proud, sad fare- 
well." 

— M. L. A. 



48 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



BOOKS EEAD FOR PAPER ON SIR WALTER 

SCOTT. 



Lockhart's Life of Scott. 

Scott, by C. D. Young. Great Writers Series. 

Sir Walter Scott, by Richard Hutton. English Men of 
Letters Series. 

Life of Sir Walter Scott, by G. R. Gleig. 

The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border, by 
Prof. John Veitch, Glasgow. 

Literary History of England, Vol. II,, pp. 94-180, by 
Mrs. M. O. Oliphaut. 

British Novelists and Their Styles, pp. 155-207, by Prof. 
David Masson. 

Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, August, 1810, 
pp. 465-482 ; November, 1814, pp. 670-676 ; March, 1817 ; 
February, 1818, etc., by Francis Jeffrey. 

Abbotsford, by Washington Irving. 

Sir Walter Scott, Essay by Thomas Carlyle. 

Scott in Ruskin in Modern Painters, etc. 

Lands op Scotts, by Hunnewell. 

And several of the novels re-read. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





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